I found this satirical little writing about how bread is the unknown killer of today, and even though I laughed at it a more serious part of my brain reminded me that even though it’s satire, it actually showcases pretty well the attitude our media and governments display to us.

(Wow, that was a long sentence. Sorry!)

I’ll quite a bit from it so to whet your appetite.

1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.

2. Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.

3. In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations.

4. Every piece of bread you eat brings you nearer to death.

Replace “bread” with “terrorists” and all of a sudden it no longer reads as satire. It reads as something that Fox would broadcast on their news.

I’m precognitive. In case you’re not into fancy terms, that means I can see the future. It doesn’t work for everything, but let me show you one example of what will come.

Commercials on television, for example. While today they’re fairly acceptable in the future they will simply consist of a very loud voice shouting the name of the company they’re advertising over and over.

For example:

AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM

and so on. I just chose Amazon as an example. Please don’t sue me.

Accompanying this symphony of madness the screen will flash out the logo of the company in epilepsy-inducing batches. Commercials will also be much longer, probably fifteen minutes or so per commercial. Per hour there will be less than five minutes of actual programming, the rest will simply be these commercials.

—

And speaking of programming. Since people of the future will have mush for brains, the entertainment will have to be reduced in order to fit their limited attention-span.

The only form of entertainment that will survive will be what we currently call “reality-shows”. In the future they will simply be called “reality” and everyone will blindly follow it. Instead of contestants or participants we’ll probably just use red or blue dots to indicate what’s going on. I mean, after all, conversation will require those mushy brains to work and that can’t be expected of the audience, right?

The red and blue dots will bob around the screen while a commenter similar to sports-commentators we have today will explain the intrigue.

Something like this:

“Oh, one of the blue dots is really angry since one of the red dots messed around with a yellow dot, even though they were engaged. Then all the red dots decided to vote the green dots off the island, but the orange dots staged a mutiny and killed all the brown dots”

And so on.

—

Okay, so I can’t actually predict the future. But what we have on television today is simply a less reformed version of the above. And if you don’t like my prediction, well, I suggest you rent either Idiocracy or They Live. Both are vastly under-appreciated movies.

The surest sign of spring is children on bicycles. At least that’s the norm up here in northern Sweden. As soon as it’s bare enough to bike, the kids will take out their bikes and start driving around like tiny madmen.

I don’t know if there’s any last gasp of winter left, but I do know that right now there’s about twenty kids roaming around the courtyard with their bikes. They’re shouting and making up games as they go along. There are older kids, there are younger kids. Some are so young they still have their training-wheels on, but everyone is pedaling and trying to keep up with each other. The energy is quite furious, almost palpable.

All this despite the fact that the weather is grey and sullen, and the temperature is only 2 degrees above zero on the celsius-scale.

But you know what really makes me happy every time I look out the window and see these bandits?

The fact that there’s such a wide variety of ethnics represented. There are kids who are browner than pure chocolate. There are kids of asian ethnicity. There are the kids of the typical pale swedish-nordic ethnicity. There’s kids with a decidedly middle-eastern origin. There are even children whose ethnicity I cannot make out. I know that at least two of the children down there barely speak swedish and communicate with the rest of the crowd in some pidgin-mix of broken swedish, english and their native language.

And I think that is great. They’re all playing along, without a thought in the world as to the color of the skin of their playmates. Not even the boundary of languages is an issue. The only thing important is to have the time of your life on your bicycle, whether this bike is brand-new or a hand-me-down.

Governments of the world could learn a lot from these kids.

(on a sidenote, all the kids have helmets. That’s good considering a substantial amount of gravel cover the walkways and this is probably quite slippery when biking)

A lot of things are rolling around inside the empty space I use for a head.

First off, I think a lot about the adventure that my parents are setting off on. It’s been kinda hush-hush so far, but now it’s pretty much official. They’re leaving Sweden and spending at least a year on the Shetland islands. They’re renting out the house, and generally this is an impressive adventure for a couple rapidly approaching their sixties. I guess that’s my parents in a nutshell though, they’re rarely phazed by anything and once they set their minds to it then it’s pretty much a given.

I don’t want to sound like a big baby either, but this makes me a bit nervous. I really appreciate the need for new horizons, but it feels a little weird to observe this process. My parents and their house always was the center of my universe. No matter how badly I screwed something up, I knew that there was always a serene place up in the north where I could lick my wounds and recharge my batteries.

It’s a weird thing being happy for your parents who are doing something impressive, while at the same time feeling a bit scared by such a big change.

The second thing that consumes a lot of my thought-process is the split with Ann-Sofie. The whole thing makes me really, really sad even though I try to put up a brave face and deal with it. Sure, life goes on and I’ll probably meet someone new in the future. But at the same time I feel so darn insecure. I don’t like moving, I don’t like splitting up. What if the same procedure gets repeated in the future? It’s tiresome to fall in love and a while down the road find out that it’s not working. Sure, this was a bit less painful than my breakups of past, which were always sudden and incredibly intense. Still hurts though, even though I know I will recover and this will not be the end of the world.

But it ties in with that first thing. I often feel so incapable of taking care of myself, and I’ve always had my parents to ask for help. Will that disappear? Who will help me move when I find a new place? Who will help me with whatever shit I manage to screw up in the future?

I’m a little emotional, and all of a sudden everything just feels so big.

There are a lot of things I want to write about right now.

I want to write about my thoughts about myself. My inner process. How the land lays with my soul, so to speak. What’s going on in the bubbling and frothing caverns of my inner being.

I also want to write about my nice new upgraded computer, thanks to a very generous aunt. I want to write about how much fun I’m having with my computer again, rather than seeing it as a big clunky stupid appliance that doesn’t meet what I want to do with it. I also want to go off on a rant about how frustrating I find Windows to be, after more than a year of exclusive Linux-use. I also want to reassure everyone that I’m still primarily an Ubuntu-user and that Windows is simply for playing Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3 and the like. I want to write about the upcoming Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) which I’m running right now, and how much nicer it is.

I want to write about politics. About how absurd I’m beginning to find the presidential election-race in the USA. I want to write about my plans to become a dual-citizen. I want to write hard-hitting insights about how messed-up the world is today.

I want to write about books, about science fiction. I want to start writing on my own novel. I want to write some memories and thoughts about a very special cat who recently ended her long tenure as the family pet.

But all of this is stopped by a complete lack of energy and “go”. I feel stuck in a creative slump. I’m not particularly depressed, even though it’s always there in the background. I just don’t have any… ooompf, if you know what I mean.

Being depressed and having to look inside yourself is a painful and often difficult process. It’s a bit like surgery on the soul - something that is painful but beneficial in the long run. In the best case, the pain is very small compared to the healing after the procedure itself.

This process of analyzing oneself is none the less interesting. I feel about my own process that I’m being almost reborn. Rediscovering who you really are, who you really feel like is I guess kind of similar to that. Depression dampens your soul, your spirit and your life. It’s like always wearing a wet blanket. Heavy and damp it’s always there.

So, when you finally start managing to get a grip on that blanket and find ways to remove it, you also discover that maybe you weren’t the same person coming out of it as you were going into it. Pain changes a person, whether to the better or worse is really a matter of perspective. Regardless the re-discovery of that person is a voyage both exciting and painful.

I know that if the person I am now could meet with the person I was ten years ago it’s very doubtful that they would get along. Ten years ago I was naive, maybe a little too shielded, and far too sure of myself. Then again, even though I now have shed most of that naivety I have also become cynical and bitter in the process. Too much of either isn’t good.

Wow, I’m rambling.

What I’m trying to build up to is what the topic is about. Accepting help, and how to do it.

The only thing I’m worse at than accepting help is asking for it. I don’t know the roots of this, maybe it’s a society that encourages self-reliance, and maybe it’s also the depression killing my trust in other humans. Trying to figure out why I do it would keep an army of people occupied for the rest of time.

Ever hear of that saying, “no man is an island”? Well, for many years I considered myself to be an island. Of course my own island traded with other islands, but I always kept to myself, trying to pride myself on my self-containment and self-reliance. What flummoxed me was why this never worked. After a while it dawned on me that I needed other people to be a person myself. I was fencing other people out, becoming incapable om emotional attachment and always preparing for the worst.

In short, I needed to ask for help when I needed it and realize that accepting that help didn’t mean I was weak or incapable of living my life. I needed to stop thinking of my life as islands, and think of it as a unity, a patchwork between people helping each other. Friends or family or complete strangers shouldn’t really matter - helping your fellow man or woman should be a natural thing. This later became the foundation of my humanist viewpoint.

But it’s still difficult for me to accept help, and ask for it. Sure, I’ve gotten better at it, but it’s still a work in progress. Combine this with my lack of expressing my thoughts in verbal communication and I feel that maybe people who help me don’t always realize how grateful I am for that help. I’m an introverted personality, and tend to grunt and mumble a lot. This does not, however, mean that I’m ungrateful. It just means I’m a caveman when it comes to verbal communication.

So, let me give a little clumsy but honest advice to anyone who thinks that he or she is an island: just don’t do it. You’re not an island. Instead maybe give people a chance to come close to you. Sure, it’ll hurt sometimes, but when you find a true friend that you can depend on it’ll be worth it. Know that this person is someone who will help you, and who you in return will want to help. In whatever way may be possible. It might be something as big as helping you move house. It might be something small. Regardless, it will be something valuable to you.

When I slept last night I had a dream. Towards the end of my sleep-cycle I had this disturbing dream that’s been haunting me all day.

It was a dream of ending, of destruction and violence. It was a dream about death.

It wasn’t a nightmare, since I almost never have those. I’m almost always aware of my dreams, and thus they seldom frighten me in the sense that nightmares do.

But this dream, even though it wasn’t a nightmare, was disturbing.

In it, the end of the world had come. Society had collapsed, and I roamed around the wintery darkness of a northern Sweden desolate and isolated. It was as dark as the arctic night could manage, and there were no lamps to scare it away. Houses were ruined, burned-out shells that once sheltered families. Even the winter itself was harsh and dark, not the beautiful expanses of snow that one usually associate the arctic winter with.

I saw my parents house. Like every other house it was a ruin, burned walls and wrecked memories. Long abandoned, the ruin was covered with frost. I knew this place was dangerous, and my companion –who suddenly appeared in my dream, creating that absolute continuity that every dream always has– knew this as well and drew his sidearm. Or her sidearm. I never found out the gender, the face hidden behind a mask of some kind.

Then suddenly, my dream switched to a flashback, and I found myself standing on my parents lawn, handing out automatic weapons to strangers. I realized we were getting ready to defend ourselves against some unknown threat, and I started handing out weapons faster. I didn’t know who or what the enemy was, but I knew there would be very few survivors.

Equally abrupt I realized that everyone I was handing out guns to was a child. No one was older than maybe 8 or 9 years. They cradled their gun with a desperate resolute I wished I’d never seen in the eyes of a child. They aimed their guns at an invisible enemy, reminding me of child-soldiers in Africa. In a way I guessed they were the same thing - the sandy deserts and humid jungles replaced with the arctic cold and silence of the north.

My flashback ended at the same time the children opened fire. I stood looking at the ruins of my parents house, amazed at the trees which had fallen into the ruins, connecting it with the husk of the garage in a bizarre kind of way.

Then something roared. Or actually, the sound was more like a lions roar combined with a sound of some kind of engine. In the upper harmonics a high-pitched squeal could be heard, like a pig screaming in fear. My companion turned and opened fire at something I couldn’t see. I felt a sharp pain in my back and knew that I would be dead soon.

Then everything went dark.

After that, I woke up.

Yeah, the topic pretty much says it all. I think a lot. My brain is rarely quiet. Unless pre-occupied with something needing immediate attention it tends to fall back on common, heavy and almost unanswerable topics.

Most of these topics can roughly be categorized either as “What’s Wrong With The World Today?” or “What’s Wrong With Me?”

—

Let me give you an example of a subject falling under the World-category that I think a lot about these days: Television. Karl Marx once said that religion is the opiate of the masses. Now, I totally agree with this –”religion” is also one of the many subtopics of the World-category that I think about– but I also think that technology that emerged in the mid-20th century has given us another opiate with which to dull our senses: Television.

When television started receiving wide commercialization and globalization in the 1970’s and 1980’s people (mostly parents) were worried that this thing would corrupt the minds of the young ones. Personally I think that television of that era is incredibly naive and innocent compared to the multiheaded dragon we have today, but none the less it was the seed for the abomination that now blares from millions of boob-tubes around the world.

Over the last two years or so I’ve become almost convinced that television is one of the pillars of what’s keeping humankind from evolving. Television of the early 21st century has become a drug, something to dull our senses so we stay docile and keep consuming. Television is the medium used to subdue people, keep them from asking questions, questioning authority and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

I don’t like using the word “conspiracy” because that word has become associated with nutters and people wearing tinfoil-hats to keep the rays out, but in a way television has become a conspiracy. A de-facto conspiracy, if you will. A conspiracy where we are bombarded with commercials, braindead “reality”-series promoting the lowest common denominators, celebrity gossip, sitcoms, generic humor, generic sadness, generic genericness. Everything fabricated and disguised as entertainment. Homogenated into a weird painting almost resembling reality but not containing one single ounce of it.

This conspiracy extends to some extent to the Internet. The numbing continues here. Look at blogs, for example. Most of the worlds most popular blogs continue the trend of television. Celebrity gossip, fashion, makeup. Admittedly this is medication that netizens themselves fabricate for themselves, but I think that we’re so fond of it simply because we’ve (and by we I mean you and me, the regular joe) been conditioned to think that it’s important. Since we believe it’s important we continue the indoctrination over onto a medium that isn’t controlled by higher-ups, and this in turn slowly corrupts this fabulous new medium after a while.

Everyone is expected to watch television. Unless you follow whatever current nonsense is being broadcast, you’re shunned by the rest of the tribe. If you don’t even own a television you’re considered a freak, an outcast, someone not to be trusted. I have a friend who a few years back tossed out his television due to lack of interest. When the swedish agency that registers ownership of televisions (yes, we have one of those) called him and asked if he’d registered ownership he of course replied that he didn’t own a television. Essentially they then treated him as a liar and a cheat.

Essentially that’s how my thoughts on television go. On and on I think about subjects like that, trying to deduce what they bring or take from our society.

—

Another thing currently rolling through my head is the topic of “therapy”, probably best categorized under the “What’s Wrong With Me?” As any regular reader knows I suffer from anxiety-related depression and am currently taking medication to combat this. A few years ago I regularly attended therapy and it helped me a bit, but after a while I felt that I was only rehashing the same old things without making any progress, and slowly started reducing the amount of therapy I exposed myself to.

Therapy is a funny word. Really, it’s just a fancy word for talking. There are of course various forms of therapy, with therapists focusing on different methods of making the subject themselves realize things. I think that being a therapist is kind of similar to wrestling smoke - if you manage to get a grip you’re really, really good, but getting there is slow and difficult progress.

But in it’s most basic form therapy is simply talking about the things that make you hurt inside. And this makes me wonder; have we lost so much of our ability to communicate with each other that we have to designate certain individuals and certify them simply in order to be able to talk to them about how we feel?

Isn’t it kinda weird when you think about it? We have SPECIAL PEOPLE that we talk to. Any alien species coming to earth would probably be thoroughly confused by the concept. After realizing what purpose it served it would then assume that we’re a very primitive species who lack the skills to communicate with each other, and thus have to educate people to do it for us.

Because, that’s what I think one part of therapy boils down to. Communication. Have we become so distanced from ourselves that we’ve deprecated the most basic of our requirements? Because that’s what I view communication as - a requirement. Requirement not only to feel good about issues that trouble ourselves, but also sharing issues that trouble others.

Usually we talk to close friends, parents, relatives, sometimes even complete strangers. But maybe we’re losing that capability? I know I’m not good at it myself, being a very introverted individual when it comes to confrontational and direct communication.

Therapy is also about finding what works for YOU, the individual in need of help. In my case, my blog has over the years become the best therapy for me.

—

There, I hope that wasn’t too scary.

Has anyone seen a movie called “Interstate 60″ produced in 2002, featuring among other people Gary Oldman, Christopher Lloyd and James Marsden? If you haven’t, then I strongly recommend finding it and watching it. For some reason it never got a big marketing campaign behind it, but it’s a real gem of a film.

There might be some minor spoilers down below, in case

Either way, there’s this excellent supporting character that shows up at one point in the film, name of Bob Cody. Played brilliantly by Chris Cooper, this character will almost always stay in my mind. He’s excellent, being a man who “says what he does and does what he says”. Essentially he’s a free-roaming cynic, and one of his pastimes is listening to the radio and loudly debunking what’s said on the same.

Example:

Woman on radio: The choice is clear. The Arion 620, the American-made car for the American driver.
Bob Cody: That’s a lie. The Arion engines are made in Japan.
Man on radio: Kill Signal, the movie everyone’s talking about, from Weber Films.
Bob Cody: [laughs] That’s another lie. We’re not talking about it.
Another man on radio: We’re the U.S. post office, and we care.
Bob Cody: Oh! That’s the biggest whopper of all.

Often I hear a Bob Cody inside of me. This is especially true whenever I see a commercial, and it’s unusual that I can contain my sarcasm about commercials and their claims. My friends and family know this well.

And all this yapping brings me to the point of this entry. There’s a company in Sweden called Viasat. The history behind the company is somewhat convoluted, essentially consisting of several different companies in various genres of business merging together over a period of some fifteen years. These days Viasat is one of the largest suppliers of satellite-television, but also maintains holdings in several of the major swedish TV-channels, as well as being the producer of the TV1000-network, one of the major premium movie-networks in Sweden. Essentially TV1000 is a swedish counterpart to HBO, but without the original productions. They broadcast movies and have no commercials, instead you subscribe to the service.

Viasat-channels are also broadcast via cable, in my case through Comhem which is probably the largest cable-TV supplier in Sweden. Me and Ann-Sofie pay for TV1000 since it’s a good way to keep track of movies, as well as being a good source for bored movie-watching in the middle of the night.

Whatever.

Viasat launched a service called Viasat On Demand a few months ago. I really haven’t checked it out until a few hours ago when I went to their homepage. Essentially it’s a video-on-demand service, you can rent movies over the internet and watch them. Nothing new here, it’s all been done before. The reason for my curiosity was that since me and Ann-Sofie already subscribe to TV1000 I was wondering if we could get a free account at this webservice. It had been implied through the commercials, so I got to wondering.

Those thoughts came to an abrupt halt when I saw the technical requirements. Translated from Swedish they are:

* PC with Windows XP or better.
* Internet Explorer 6 or better.
* Flash Player 8 or better.
* Windows Media Player 10 or better.
* A minimum of 1mbit/s broadband connection. 2mbit/s recommended.
* An updated WMP with individualization for DRM-encryption.
* The clock on your computer may not deviate more than 15 minutes from the clock on our servers.
* You must allow cookies.

This means if you’re running anything except 100% Microsoft-products or Microsoft OS’s you’re shit out of luck. It’s absolutely pathetic in my opinion. Why not just put a slogan on the front page saying “Screw you if you’re not a braindead lemming”?

The irony is even more obvious considering that Viasat On Demands slogan translates to “Entertainment On Your Conditions”. When I read this I heard Bob Cody inside of me shouting:

“Liars! That’s not entertainment on my conditions!”

Not too long ago me and Ann-Sofie went up north to experience the Winter Market in Jokkmokk. We stayed at my parents place (who live about 10 km outside of Jokkmokk) and had a fairly good time. Of course, we weren’t the only guests there and I had a brief chat with an old friend of my father. I mentioned that I wrote a blog, and he seemed somewhat confused and essentially asked me why I did that. I answered something flippant to the effect of “I like to push my opinions on strangers” but in the days since I answered that question I’ve come to realize there’s a better answer to the same question.

The answer is simple and somewhat brutal:

I suck at verbal communication.

I never feel that I manage to convey my opinion or emotion correctly when talking. Admittedly, I find it difficult to do even when writing, but writing is a more honest way of communication for me. I have an easier time to line up my thoughts and it’s easier for me to communicate my opinion and thoughts about whatever subject might be at hand.

When talking, I hide this behind a self-assured attitude of forging ahead. Essentially I turn into George W. Bush and accidentally talk myself into situations that I don’t like, simply because I feel a need to hide this insecurity behind lots and lots of words.

Writing is more natural for me, and thus my blog has become my mouthpiece of choice for communicating things that I find difficult to talk about; it can be too emotional, or simply too complicated for me to sum up in spoken words. Written communication is easier for me, especially when it comes to painful subjects. I find it very difficult to talk about my emotions because usually I start crying. I cry when writing as well, but my ability to write isn’t impeded in the same way as my ability to talk.

A typical example of this is pretty much anytime I talk on the telephone. I really don’t like telephone-conversations except for a few exceptions. Occasionally I manage to loosen up enough to have a conversation, but in most cases I become very stiff and nervous. Earlier today I called a certain someone to wish a happy valentines day, to tell her I love her, and of course I clammed up and lost any kind of flow in the conversation. After a while I got so locked that I ended the conversation with the excuse that I needed to eat! How dumb is that? Well, on a scale from 1-10 I’d say it’s a solid 8.

Unfortunately that’s par for the course when it comes to telephone-conversations with me. There are exceptions to this rule, I’ve managed to have hours-long conversations about everything and nothing, but in most cases I clam up and become inwardly panicked about not knowing what to say. When I talk to my parents on the phone I mumble and sound very absent, and only when making an effort can I sound even slightly interested in anything they say - even though I listen carefully to everything they say and wish that I could somehow be more that just some mumbling fool pretending to be their eldest son.

I grew up rather shy. I preferred the company of books (and later computers) rather than people, and even though I over time learned to relax a little and actually talk to strangers I still need periods of isolation. One of my friends a few years back complained that whenever he talked to a pretty girl he would lock up and start saying weird things that scared them off, and how he was somewhat jealous of my ability to talk to pretty much anyone. This ability is basically a fraud to help make it easier for myself - I learned in my teens how to fake it, and this made it easier for me to lighten up and talk to people, rather than becoming really self-conscious like I used to. In fact, for many years I was great at approaching strangers and striking up a conversation.

Now, I’m losing this ability, and I prefer to communicate through writing instead. That’s why I blog. Not because I have some delusions of grandeur about becoming some rich asshole, or pushing my opinions on people, or whatever other things about blogging might exist.

No, I do it because this is the best way for me to communicate who I am with both friends, family and complete strangers.